


a needle called fear

by carefulren



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Batfamily (DCU), Batfamily Angst (DCU), Gen, Hallucinations, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Scarecrow's Fear Toxin (DCU), Tumblr Prompt, Whump, Whumpfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26455915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carefulren/pseuds/carefulren
Summary: Dick unknowingly gets injected with a dose of fear toxin and hallucinates his family being attacked.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 132





	a needle called fear

Dick’s standing just outside the manor. He can’t remember how he got there. He can’t actually remember anything. All he knows is there’s a lingering, tight prick of pain on his neck, a small, circular bump that’s hot against his palm as he rubs insistently at it.

He stumbles forward, his legs wobbly, uncoordinated, and he glances down with a loose frown, his torn, frayed suit bottoms swimming in and out of focus. He pats a bare knee, bringing his hand up to find thick, red blood coloring his pale palm. He hums, briefly trying to supply missing pieces in his mind, but he quickly finds that thinking makes his already pounding head want to split into two.

Absently wiping his hand along his side, which weirdly hurts, an inside kind of hurt that confuses him even more, he cranes his neck back up toward the manor, body tensing to alert as a familiar tuft of overly-processed green hair slinks in through the front door.

He makes to rush forward, but he falls instead, dropping hard to his hands and knees. Glancing back, he frowns when he spots dense, dark mud gluing his feet to the ground, mud that he’s sure wasn’t there moments before.

“Shit,” he hisses, twisting around until he’s clawing through the mud that seems to produce faster and thicker the harder he digs. The mud is tight and sharp at his feet, each drag of his hand bringing forth bouts of pain, but he presses forward until a sharp, familiar scream echoes from the manor.

His entire body falls rigid, and he can’t whip around fast enough. His eyes are trembling as he scans for the source, stopping at a window peering through the study. Joker’s got Damian’s arm twisted tightly behind his back, and Damian’s trying to strategically struggle against the grip, but then Dick hears a loud snap, louder than the air that puffs fast from his lungs, and Damian’s dropped to the floor.

“No,” Dick mutters clawing at the ground before him to drag his cement feet forward. He pauses when he hears a window shatter, and he whips his gaze to the sound, finding Tim unconscious and hanging over the edge of the broken window on the second floor, blood dripping like rain drops down to a pool of red at the ground below.

“Tim,” Dick gasps out, panic an iron weight against his lungs. “No, Tim!” He desperately digs his fingers into the mud below him, teeth clenched tightly. He has to...

“Watch and learn, sweet, little Bird!”

Dick’s blood runs cold, his breath squeezed from his lungs at the chilling, teasing voice that carries across the wind. He pushes himself up, head tipping toward the roof to see Bruce dangling over the edge by a tight, pale hand around his neck. Bruce is struggling, both hands wrapped desperately around Joker’s wrist, but Joker appears impossibly unfazed, and he’s laughing.

“Take notes. This is what it looks like to kill.”

Joker lets go, and Bruce’s limp body starts falling, slowly. Everything around him is suddenly too slow, and Dick reaches forward, wishing he could move, wishing...

_“Bruce!”_

***

Bruce jerks awake with a sharp gasp, and the almost immediate sounds of hard, frantic footsteps growing louder and closer tells him something is terribly wrong. He’s swinging his legs over the bed when Alfred throws the door open, eyes wild and worried. “Master Bruce, it’s-”

“Dick!” Tim shouts from downstairs, clashing with the loudly strangled “Richard!” from Damain.

Bruce doesn’t wait for an explanation, he follows Alfred out of the room, moving along a suffocating push of adrenaline until he’s stumbling to a stop out of the front door, his jaw going slack and his mind going frigteningly white hot.

Dick’s on the ground, brusied and bloody, and he’s moving his hands over Damian and Tim as if his life depends on it. He can hear the tremble in his voice, the repeated insistence that the Joker was just here, and that he watched him attack everyone, that he threw Bruce off the roof.

“Fear toxin.”

Bruce jumps slightly, whipping to see Alfred at his side, a syringe clasped tightly in his hand. “We’ll have to run blood work, but this antidote should take the edge off. May I?”

Nodding, Bruce finally wills his legs to move, stepping down the front steps with heavy footfalls, Alfred right at his side. He drops to a crouch in front of Dick, reaching forward but afraid his touch won’t bring comfort to Dick’s lost mind.

“B-Bruce? I saw him! You... He... He choked you. _Bruce_ , he’s here.”

“He’s not, chum,” Bruce tries, his heart physically chipping at the loudly evident break in Dick’s voice. “It’s fear toxin. You were hallucinating.”

“ _No_ ,” Dick growls, reaching forward, supporting himself with one hand wrapped tightly around Bruce’s arm. “He was here. He was... _wait_.” He whips unsteady eyes around, throat bobbing, entire body shaking. “Where’s Jason?”

“Richard, he’s at his apartment,” Damian tries softly. “Todd doesn’t usually stay here.”

“No... No, no, no! He has Jason! He has Jason again, and we _can’t_ \- Bruce! We can’t... Not again!”

“Call Jason,” Bruce growls to Tim, not bothering to hide the fear laced in his tone. “Get him here, now.” He can hear Tim fumbling with his phone, and then Tim’s speaking, voice shaking, small.

“J-Jay? Can you come over here? It’s Dick.”

“Jason!” Dick screams, and Bruce has to wrap both arms around Dick to keep him grounded.

“Stop, B! We have to- _Jason_!”

“Alfred,” Bruce growls, and Alfred bends down and jabs a syringe into Dick’s neck, pushing down hard until Dick’s frantic shaking and struggling begins to slow.

“Easy, Dick,” Bruce mutters into Dick’s sweat-soaked hair, his arms softening around Dick’s slumping frame. “We’re all here, and you are going to be just fine. I promise.”

Dick hums into his chest, and then his body all but melts against Bruce, his eyes fluttering closed and his breathing evening to slow, steady rises and falls.

“Let’s get him inside.” Bruce stands, lifting Dick with a desperate ease despite Dick’s broad, tall frame. “Alfred, prep medical for bloodwork, and call Leslie. I want a full assessment.”

“Right away, sir.”

Alfred starts off first, and Bruce keeps a slow pace to match with Tim and Damian, the two eerily quiet at either side of him.

“He’ll be fine.” Bruce isn’t sure who he’s really reassuring here, two rattled sons or his own, rapid heart. “He won’t want to see you both so somber when he wakes.”

“Bruce...” Tim starts, worrying his hands. “What do we... I mean... We should do something, right? We _have_ to do something.”

“I agree with Drake, father. We need to track Richard’s movements over the last few hours, pinpoint his coordinates and investigate each location he’s stopped at for more than a minute.”

If Bruce weren’t seconds away from isolating himself to work through a full blown break down, he’d be impressed at Damian’s immediate willingness to agree with Tim; however, the situation at hand is very much real.

“There will be time for that, I promise. Right now our entire focus needs to be on Dick because coming out of fear toxin is-”

“-the equivalent of climbing your way out of a grave after dying,” Jason mutters as he slows his run down to a quick walk up the driveway, bike keys tightly gripped in his hand. “Heavy and confusing, but what would I know?”

Bruce can immediately tell that Jason’s attempting to deflect from his rattled fear, but he can still hear it loud and clear in Jason’s tone, a slight, frayed edge to his voice, one that’s typically reserved for his siblings.

“What happened? Jason questions, ignoring the pained, tired glare from Bruce as he falls into step beside Tim. “Who’s ass are we kicking?”

“No one’s tonight,” Bruce mutters, stepping ahead into the manor but staying close enough to hear his other, three sons.

“Christ, Jay, it was scary.”

Tim’s voice, Bruce notes, finally a little less shaky and more alert.

“We woke up to hear Richard screaming father’s name, and we found him outside. He was.... He thought the Joker broke in and attacked us.”

Damian’s voice, Bruce thinks, is still trembling far too much for his liking, but it’s the single, cracking word that follows that brings his heart to an agreement with his waning adrenaline.

“Fuck.”

***

“He would be the one to hallucinate bad things happening to his family. He’s such a softy.”

“Jason.”

“Grayson isn’t heartless like you, Todd.”

“Oh, there’s a heart in there, Demon Brat. I just willingly choose to perceive it as nothing but a lumpy organ that keeps me alive.”

“That’s the most absurd thing I think I’ve ever heard from your mouth, Todd.”

“Damn, I must be off my game if that’s all it takes to rattle that tiny brain of yours.”

“Will you two shut the hell up? You’re going to wake him.”

It takes Dick a worryingly long moment to gather that he’s the “him” in question, and that he’s awake. Sort of. His mind is wrapping around the present, but it’s a long process that’s slowed down by fuzzy roadblocks, unhinged snapshots of memories that aren’t quite forming fully.

“Wha..?” He croaks out, eyes flying open at the shouts that follow.

“Dick!”

“Richard!”

“Easy, idiots! You’ll overwhelm him.”

Dick’s eyes dart around each face, drinking in each sight. He’s not sure why, but he’s desperately relieved to see his family. His eyes linger on Bruce’s face, a need he doesn’t fight, but then panic hits, and he whips his entire head until he finds Jason, alive, not... captured? He thinks; he’s not sure.

“Fear toxin,” Jason supplies quietly, knowing that look all too well. “You saw the Joker.”

Dick’s immediate response is to bark out question after question, his memories flooding through is mind like murky, cold water, but Bruce rakes steady fingers through his hair, easing some of the panic pressing against his ribs.

“There’ll be time to talk, son. But right now, you need rest. You’re concussed, you have three broken ribs, various lacerations, and your ankles and feet are scraped up pretty badly.”

“I...”

“We’re all fine, Dick,” Jason presses firmly, catching Dick’s clouded eyes.

“And we will still be fine when you wake again.” Damian takes a seat on the edge of Dick’s bed, mindful of the tubes and wires. He places a single, steady hand to Dick’s covered arm, a wordless reassurance that Dick clings to.

“You’ll all still be here?” Dick rasps, throat a dry burn from disuse. He’s bone tired, exhaustion tugging at him from all angles, tethering him to another bout of dreamless sleep.

Tim steps closer just as Dick begins to fade, his arm brushing against Jason’s, and he brings a voice to what’s colored in everyone’s eyes, what’s reflected in the strong, protective postures surrounding Dick’s bed.

“We aren’t going anywhere, Dick.”

**Author's Note:**

> This made me v sad. 
> 
> Come say hi or drop a prompt off on tumblr! (@toosicktoocare)


End file.
